TWC Official:Terms of Service

THIS IS JUST A DRAFT AND IS NOT BINDING YET.

Terms of Service

TWCenter provides the services to you, the visitor, based on its Terms of Service outlined here. When using the services provided by TWCenter, you are subject to these posted terms. Usage of the services on this site denotes acceptance of these terms. The TOS may be changed at any time and without direct notice to individual visitors, so it is recommended that you check back with this page at any time you have questions or concerns.

Registration Requirements

In order to view messages on the TWCenter message boards without user restrictions, no registration is required or necessary. In order to post messages on the boards, and use other advanced services, you must register with TWCenter using a valid e-mail address. Upon registration, an Activation Key in the form of a URL will be mailed to the address you provided. You must visit this URL using the web browser of your choice to activate the account. No posting privileges are granted until the account is activated.

TWCenter does not require you to use your real name or other identification that can be easily traced to you, and the e-mail address you provide will be kept private. In order to register on TWCenter, registrants must be 13 years of age or older. TWCenter does not knowingly collect any information from any users under 13 years, and if it is found that an underage user has fraudulently registered, their account will immediately be terminated.

Content Notice

By viewing the site content, you agree that all content on the TWCenter message boards is the responsibility of the person from which the content originated. You agree that neither TWCenter nor its sponsors or affiliates are responsible for all content that you personally post or upload. TWCenter does not directly control any content posted on the boards, and does not guarantee the truthfulness or quality of any content.

You agree that while using the TWCenter message boards, you may be exposed to content that is offensive or objectionable, and that you will in no way hold TWCenter nor its sponsors or affiliates liable in any way, shape, or form for any harm or loss that may come to you or others as a result of viewing this content. TWCenter is not responsible for screening content before it is posted, although an offensive language filter is installed on the system that will reject certain posts that may contain certain words deemed offensive or used most often in an offensive way.

Account Responsibilty

Users are solely responsible for protecting their accounts from access by others. You are strongly encouraged to select a hard-to-guess password and not re-use that password on any other sites where it may be read by the owners or administrators of that site.

While it is acceptable for users to maintain multiple accounts on TWCenter, TWC can and does track multiple shared accounts from a single or multiple computers as one account in terms of TOS violations. If the TOS is violated severely enough to warrant the banning of one account, all known accounts shared between a single or multiple users who use the same computer may also be banned for the actions of the violating account at the administrators' discretion.

Because of this rule, it is highly recommended that board users do not share their accounts with others, nor share their computers used to access the site with others, as the actions of some other person could easily directly impact all known shared message board accounts.

Privacy and Release of Information

Under normal circumstances, TWCenter will never release your provided information to any third party without a court order requiring us to do so. However, in cases of certain severe and/or repeated TOS violations or illegal activities, we reserve the right to forward any and all known information about you and your accounts to your ISP (including libraries, schools, and places of employment), e-mail service provider, your ISP account owner (if someone else is actually paying for it), and any parties whose copyright has clearly been infringed by your actions on the boards.

To view TWC's full privacy policy, see below.

Member Conduct

You agree that you will not use this service to perform the following actions:

1. Signature Images

   • Signatures may consist of any amount of text and images combined. They will be automatically trimmed to fit in a 500×200-pixel box.
   • All signature contents combined may not exceed 250 KB. Signatures that exceed this limit will be removed or edited by moderators.

2. Spamming

   Posts that clearly advertise a service or product are not allowed, unless the forum provides an "advertising" board. This includes, but is not limited to:

   • Unsolicited commercial or personal web site advertisements
   • For-Sale/For-Trade/For-Auction/Wanted notices
   • "Make Money Fast" scams, chain letters, and pyramid schemes
   • Advertising for another message board (even other Ogre's Network boards)

   Users are allowed to include a web site address in a signature, request comments on their personal site in a social setting, or providing only once an interesting or relevant link to another site.

3. Off-Topic Posting

   The main purpose of TWCenter is to provide discussion forums for various video and computer games and their systems. Topicality is expected and will be enforced on all boards, so take the extra time to post on the proper board.

4. Censor Bypassing

   The TWC message boards are programmed with a list of words that are considered vulgar under any context, and these words are not allowed to be posted. Attempting to bypass the censor by misspelling, inserting spaces or symbols, transposing letters, using look-alike symbols, or any other method is not allowed. The only acceptable method of posting one of these vulgar words is to completely obscure it, making it impossible to determine what the word is without context. Additionally, certain words are prohibited from being used in topic titles and user information pages; bypassing the censor to post those words where they are restricted is also disallowed.

   For example, if "gris" is a banned word:

   • Not allowed: g-r-i-s, gr*s, g***, 9|-1$, girs, gryeeeas, grizznizz, **** (rhymes with "bris")
   • Allowed: ****, ****ed, ****ing, g'ed, g-word

5. Disruptive Posting

   Posts that disrupt the message boards for other users, intentional or not, are prohibited. This includes, but is not limited, to:

   • Message posts or topic titles that force browsers to scroll horizontally
   • Large blank or content-free posts
   • Bumping old or "dead" topics without a reasonable cause
   • Posting multiple identical or near-identical messages or topics, including "fad" topics
   • Topic titles or posts consisting of all or mostly capital letters (Images cannot be larger than 600 pixels wide).
   • Intentionally hard-to-read posts (i.e. using all, mostly, or alternating capital letters; using no spaces, capital letters, or punctuation; using large amounts of "1337 speak", et cetera)
   • Post counting (i.e. "First", "100th Post")

6. Flaming (Insulting Other Users)

   Posts clearly insulting other board members, individually or as a group, directly or indirectly, are not allowed. This includes, but is not limited to:

   • Name-calling ("You're an idiot", "You moron")
   • Direct insults ("Screw you")
   • Offensive orders ("Go kill yourself")
   • Insinuations ("Are you stupid or something?") or insults towards family ("Your mom...")

7. Offensive Posting

   Posts of a patently offensive nature are not allowed. This includes, but is not limited to:

   • Using vulgar, profane, or sexually explicit language
   • Using race, religion, sexual orientation, culture, ethnicity, handicap, nationality, or gender as a means of insult
   • Using sexual preference terms as a term of insult in any way, shape, or form
   • Using threatening, harassing, defamatory, hate-speech, or libelous language
   • Posting or requesting links to or material from pornographic, obscene, or hate-speech web sites
   • Posting links to web sites with potentially offensive content without a clear warning
   • Descriptions or details about any sexual act or sexual organs

8. Impersonation

   Users will be immediately banned (along with any associated accounts) for impersonating other boards users by creating and/or using a message board account with a name clearly intended to impersonate, mock, or antagonize another user, or otherwise falsely claiming to be another message board member.

9. Illegal Activities

   Posts that violate or incite others to violate the law are not allowed. This includes, but is not limited to, asking for or providing, in any way, shape, or form:

   • Illegal copies of copyrighted software (ROMs, Warez)
   • Methods of circumventing copyright protection (Cracks, CD Keys, mod chips)
   • Illegal copies of copyrighted music (MP3s), movies, videos, or any other type of media
   • Methods of cheating in online games

10. Harassment/Stalking/Privacy

    Continual harassing behavior directed towards a certain individual or group with the intent of an creating an intimidating, offensive, or hostile environment on the boards, with or without use of explicit or implicit threats is strictly prohibited. Posting private information without permission is also prohibited. Requesting someone's age is also prohibbited, unless it's done by the board administration/staff.

11. Trolling (Inciting Flames)

    Posts intended solely to annoy and/or offend other posters by going against the clear nature of a board or topic are not allowed. This includes, but is not limited to:

    • Provoking other users to respond with flames
    • Provoking fans of a particular system or game, especially on boards dedicated to that system or game
    • Making misleading topic titles
    • Asking obviously useless questions
    • Posting false information as fact

12. Flooding, Invading, and Board Wars

    Users will be immediately banned (along with any associated accounts) for:

    • Flooding a board with multiple disruptive topics or posts
    • Invading another board (flooding a board as a group with multiple topics or posts)
    • Instigating, participating in, or retaliating in an invasion of the Total War Centre message board or any other online service
    • Announcing or inciting a "war" or any conflict with the regular members of another board

13. Unauthorized Access

    Accessing or attempting to access any TWC user account not belonging to the user in question without permission is prohibited. Accessing another user's account in this manner is grounds for immediate loss of all known accounts.

14. Bugs and Exploits

    Using exploits or tricks in the Twcenter code to gain privileges, access, or abilities not clearly intended by the board design is prohibited. While you are more than welcome to try and find any exploits away from the public eye, making them public or using them for personal benefit is grounds for immediate loss of all known accounts.

15. Usernames, Profiles, and Forms

    Violating any of the above rules with a username or any part of the user profile (signature, quote, e-mail, IM) is considered a severe violation.

16. Other

    Any other activity that is clearly detrimental to the flow of conversation and normal activities of the boards and its users may also be deleted.

Terms Violations

Topics and message posts that violate the TOS will be deleted from the boards, and additional penalties may be applied at the moderator's discretion. Re-posting deleted violations (yours or those of others) is also considered a violation.

Messages and topics may be removed at any time and for any reason at the sole discretion of TWCenter/imb39 and its designated moderators. User accounts may be warned, suspended, or revoked at any time and for any reason at the sole discretion of imb39 and his designated moderators. All determinations of what is "acceptable" and "unacceptable" content will be determined solely by imb39 and whoever he designates as moderators. You agree that the decision of the moderators and administrators is final, and you may not legally contest their rulings.

Intentional, repeated, or severe violations are cause for the banning of your account, all use of the boards from your IP address or your entire ISP, and TWCenter/imb39 contacting your ISP or other relevant parties concerning your activities.

Privacy Policy Statement

Definitions

"Visitor" refers to any person who is not a registered member of this site who is viewing it using a web browser.
"Member" refers any person who is a registered member of this site.

Policy

This is the web site of Total War Center.

You may contact us at http://www.twcenter.net/forums/sendmessage.php.

For each visitor to our Web page, our Web server automatically recognizes only the visitor’s domain name, but not the e-mail address (where possible).

We collect only the domain name, but not the e-mail address of visitors to our Web page, the e-mail addresses of those who post messages to our bulletin board, the e-mail addresses of those who make postings to our chat areas.

For purposes of validation, registered members of our forum are required to provide a valid email address. This email may be accessed by moderators of the forum, and dependant on settings, may become viewable by members of the public. If you do not wish this information to be shared, you can modify your privacy settings here. TWC will never disclose your email address to third parties, and use by moderating staff is for the enforcement of the Terms of Service only.

If you do not want to receive e-mail from us in the future, please let us know by notifying us at http://www.twcenter.net/forums/sendmessage.php or by deselecting the "receive mail" options in your User Control Panel.

If you supply us with your postal address on-line you will only receive the information for which you provided us your address. Your address details will not be stored for future reference, and will be deleted once requested information has been supplied.

To try and bring you offers that are of interest to you, we have relationships with other companies that we allow to place ads on our Web pages. As a result of your visit to our site, ad server companies may collect information such as your domain type, your IP address and clickstream information. For further information, consult the privacy policies of Google Ads.

Upon request we provide site visitors with access to all information [including proprietary information] that we maintain about them by paying a reasonable fee as determined by the site operator.

Visitors can have this information corrected or removed by visiting us at http://www.twcenter.net/forums/sendmessage.php.

We have appropriate security measures in place in our physical facilities to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of information that we have collected from you at our site.

If you feel that this site is not following its stated information policy, you may contact or us using the following URL: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/sendmessage.php.

This site is in full compliance with terms of the United Kingdom's Data Protection Act 1998. This site is additionally in compliance with the terms of COPPA. In furtherance of this, those visitors under the age of 13, wishing to become registered members of the site must get permission from an appropriate parent or guardian, and provide proof of this by completing this form. Failure to comply will result in the removal of your account, and the deletion of any details held by us about you.

TWC's Probation System

Instead of being permabanned as in the past, repeat offenders are now placed on a new probationary system. The details are as follows:

Probationary System

If a user is a repeat offender he may enter in the probationary system. This is decided in one of two ways: (1) A member is automatically enrolled following the receipt of his third active warning. (2) A member is enrolled by the Chief of Moderation following consultation with the moderating team. Any member of the moderating Staff can propose users for entry into this system.

How it works

• If a user is in the System every warning results in a suspension.
• If a user has a history of a certain type of violation, consider that history to be a caution (i.e., a user with a history of flaming should receive a warning if they do so again instead of a caution).
• The length of the suspension is decided by the Head of Moderation after consultation with the moderating team and it should not be shorter than a month.
• Consecutive suspensions during the probation period will increase in length.
• The length of probation period is decided by the Head of Moderation in consultation with the moderating team and sholud usually be no shorter than three months; the period restarts at the end of each suspension.
• The user in question is made fully aware of the rules and function of the system.
• Warnings acquired while on probation will result in a suspension and an upgrade to the next highest stage of probation (see below).

The Stages

• Stage One probation consists of a three month term with a one month suspension for any warnings acquired during that term.
• Stage Two probation consists of a six month term with a two month suspension for any warnings acquired during that term.
• Stage Three probation consists of a twelve month term with a four month suspension for any warnings acquired during that term.

And what about the "permaban"?

The permaban is reserved for cases of spambots and posting porn.

Secondary Probation

These members are in the "limbo" of the probationary system, for lack of a better term. For instance, a member earns two warnings followed by a caution (obviously this rarely happens, but it can). These members are not treated as a normal member, nor are they treated as a member on probation. While the caution is not enough to place them on probation, any infraction they earn in the next month (caution or warning) will result in them being placed on probation. Note that this is different from a normal member, who may only be placed on probation upon receiving his third active warning or by the Chief of Moderation.